


To Build a Home

by glasscaskets



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Flashbacks, Friendship, Healing from trauma, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Religion, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 01:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16253825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscaskets/pseuds/glasscaskets
Summary: CNN: BREAKING NEWS – Steve Rogers is “no longer acting with the authority” of the United States government and his whereabouts are “uncertain.”; Buzzfeed News: Thirty Hours, Thirty Dead: The Chaos and the Control in Europe; The Washington Post: Is this the new normal?: The Post editors on Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, and the failure of the Sokovia Accords.; BBC News: Margaret ‘Peggy’ Carter, whom Princess Kate Middleton has called ‘our nation’s foremost role model for young women,’ has died. She was 95 years old.“Steve. Don’t make me take the phone.”Three years on the run isn’t easy on anyone, not least a man whose life has already come apart at the seams a few times already, but Steve has one good thing at his side: Sam Wilson. For as long as either of them can remember, all they’ve wanted to do is the right thing, Now, with nothing left to guide them but that single principle (and one another), they set out into the world.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angeolras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeolras/gifts).



> Thank you to the very, very amazing angeolras for illustrating this fic with two of the most totally stunning pieces ever. I'm amazed.

Part One

 

 

_Earlier Today_

 

NEWS – 8:26 PM

**CNN**

Watch Live: Secretary of State Ross’s address to the press: “One man does not get to decide what is right and what is wrong. We will apprehend these criminals and we will bring them to justice.”

 

NEWS – 8:20 PM

**The Washington Post**

“This has been a crisis a long time coming”: from Lagos to Seoul, New York City to Novi Grad, the economic and infrastructural damages that trail the Avengers.

 

NEWS – 8:13 PM

**The New York Times**

Steve Rogers is missing, along with James Barnes and four max-security prisoners. A _Times_ reporter is on the ground in Washington.

 

NEWS – 8:11 PM

**BBC News**

United States Secretary of State admits he ‘cannot state precisely’ the whereabouts of Steve Rogers.

 

NEWS – 8:09 PM

**CNN**

BREAKING NEWS – Steve Rogers is “no longer acting with the authority” of the United States government and his whereabouts are “uncertain.”

 

NEWS – 7:38 PM

**The New York Times**

“Three bodies fell out of the sky”: an eyewitness details the collapse of an airport in Shkeuditz, Germany, the result of an apparent firefight involving Iron Man, others.

 

NEWS – 7:18 PM

**The Los Angeles Times**

A legal analysist says the negotiations regarding the Avengers and the United Nations were “fraught” long before the events at the Joint Counter Terrorist Center yesterday. “The legalities were always muddy.”

 

NEWS – 7:04 PM

**Fox News**

“BUT ARE WE SAFE?”: Citizens press for answers in the aftermath of a group of “rogue superhumans” defying explicit government orders and a terrorist on the loose.

 

NEWS – 6:50 PM

**The Washington Post**

Is this the new normal?: The _Post_ editors on Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, and the failure of the Sokovia Accords.

 

NEWS – 5:45 PM

**BBC News**

BREAKING: An airport in Germany has partially collapsed after a violent clash between a group of enhanced individuals. No casualties reported so far.

 

NEWS – 5:44 PM

**The New York Times**

Who is James Barnes? A pair of _Times_ reporters attempt to compose a portrait of a man without a history.

 

NEWS – 5:40 PM

**Fox News**

Does James Barnes have ties to ISIS?

 

NEWS – 4:45 PM

**The Washington Post**

“This is exactly the kind of event we were working to prevent”: four major architects of the failed Sokovia Accords speak with the _Post_ on the events of the last two days.

 

NEWS – 4:13 PM

**Buzzfeed News**

Thirty Hours, Thirty Dead: The Chaos and the Control in Europe

 

NEWS – 3:54 PM

**The Los Angeles Times**

Photos: European Travel in Lockdown

 

iMESSAGE – 3:39 PM

AT&T Free Msg: You used all of the 1GB of data added to your account. For $15, we added another 1GB of data to use through 06/24/2016. Flying through your data? Try using Wifi. Get more usage tips at att.com/manageusage, or compare plans at att.com/changemydata.

 

NEWS – 3:35 PM

**BBC News**

The suspect in two terror events in two days, James Barnes, is at large. 

 

NEWS – 3:22 PM

**The New York Times**

A suspect has been named in the shooting at the Joint Terrorism Center in Berlin; it is James Barnes, a man also allegedly responsible for the bombing in Vienna earlier this week.

 

NEWS – 3:01 PM

**The New York Times**

Eight are dead and thirty-eight are injured after a shooting and a breakout from the Joint Terrorism Center in Berlin; a spokesman told the _Times_ that the threat is “contained but ongoing.”

 

NEWS – 2:48 PM

**CNN**

BREAKING NEWS – An “unclassified terror event” at the Joint Terrorism Center in Berlin, Germany has claimed at least five lives. A suspect in yesterday’s bombing in Vienna was brought in earlier today.

 

NEWS – 2:45 PM

**BBC News**

BREAKING: At least four are dead inside the Joint Terrorism Center in Berlin and a detainee has escaped. Details are emerging.

 

EMERGENCY ALERTS – 2:19 PM

**Emergency Alert**

Berlin, Germany: Mass blackouts in your area. Avoid travel.

 

NEWS – 1:50 PM

**The New York Times**

Three nations, two days, and a test for the so-called “New Avengers”: the anatomy of the capture of the Vienna International Centre Bombing suspect.

 

NEWS – 1:38 PM

**CNN**

Watch Live: President Ellis speaks from the White House on the UN Bombing, the capture of a suspect, and the “ways forward.”

 

NEWS – 1:15 PM

**The Washington Post**

A jet containing the suspect in yesterday’s bombing of the Vienna International Centre is set to land in Berlin at any moment; on board as well are Steve Rogers and the prince of Wakanda. We asked experts: What comes next?

 

NEWS: 11:36 AM

**Fox News**

Suspect in Vienna bombing yesterday “came willingly” when confronted by Iron Patriot, sources say.

 

NEWS – 11:30 AM

**The New York Times**

The “prime suspect” in the bombing of the Vienna International Centre yesterday has been apprehended in Romania. His identity is unknown, though early reports suggest he acted alone.

 

NEWS – 11:26 AM

**CNN**

BREAKING NEWS: Suspect in the bombing in Vienna apprehended by international task force, including War Machine, in Bucharest.

 

NEWS – 11:22 AM

**BBC News**

BREAKING: Interpol confirms “prime suspect” in bombing of Vienna’s International Centre has been apprehended.

 

_Yesterday_

 

NEWS – 3:15 PM

**The Washington Post**

18 are dead in a terrorist attack at the International Centre in Vienna, Austria. Among the dead are dignitaries from eleven nations, two children, and the king of Wakanda. They had gathered to sign an international agreement meant to “foster international unity and preserve peace wherever possible.”

 

NEWS – 3:01 PM

**BBC News**

We’d like to issue a correction to our previous notification, which was published in error. This is a developing story. Only one member of the Wakandan royal family, King T’Chaka, is dead. His son, Prince T’Challa, survives.

 

NEWS – 2:55 PM

**BBC News**

Two members of the Wakandan royal family are dead: King T’Chaka, age 70, and his son Prince T’Challa, aged 31. This leaves the third poorest nation on earth without clear leadership.

 

NEWS – 2:40 PM

**The New York Times**

A terrorist attack on the International Centre in Vienna has left at least 12 dead. Those targeted had gathered to sign the Sokovia Accords, the so-called “superhero regulation bill.”

 

NEWS – 2:38 PM

**CNN**

BREAKING NEWS: A bomb in at the International Centre in Vienna has killed at least 10.

 

NEWS – 2:35 PM

**BBC News**

BREAKING: A bombing in Vienna at a meeting of United Nations and World Security Counsel members has killed at least 10.

 

NEWS – 11:13 AM

**The New York Times**

A gathering of some 250 representatives of the United Nations, World Security Counsel, and 140 nations is soon to commence to settle the “Sokovia question”: how much freedom can we grant the Avengers?

 

NEWS – 9:30 AM

**The Wall Street Journal**

Editorial: Could the Sokovia Accords doom us all?

 

NEWS – 9:12 AM

**The Washington Post**

What will the signing of the Sokovia Accords mean for most Americans? 

 

_Earlier This Week_

 

NEWS – Sun 1:14 PM

**The Los Angeles Times**

Could the Sokovia Accords actually work?

 

NEWS – Sun 12:30 PM

**The New York Times**

What Wakanda’s vow to “re-join the rest of the world” means for its impoverished people, many of whom live without “basic sustenance.”

 

NEWS – Sat 8:45 PM

**The New York Times**

Margaret “Peggy” Carter, a quiet heroine of the Second World War, a founding member of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the “dearest friend” of Captain America, has died in London. She was 95.

 

NEWS – Sat 8:15 PM

**BBC News**

Margaret ‘Peggy’ Carter, whom Princess Kate Middleton has called ‘our nation’s foremost role model for young women,’ has died. She was 95 years old.

 

“Steve.”

Steve grunted.

“ _Steve_. Don’t make me take the phone.”

Steve looked up, finally, at Sam, who was squinting at him the very particular squint he reserved for when Steve was doing something stupid. Not stupid like I-don’t-know-any-better stupid, like when he’d accidentally microwaved a fork, but stupid like what Sam called “passive self harm,” which Steve pretended he didn’t understand, but he kind of did, because—well. It was like when he googled things that were only going to make him miserable (“chances of memory recovery after severe electric shock to brain?”; “articles about captain America should retire”; “what exactly do anti-vaxxers think is going to happen!”). It was that kind of squint, of stupid-mostly-on-purpose. Preventable stupid.

Which was a kind of stupid Steve was pretty well-versed in being, he thought, all pissy, and then spared a moment for how thoroughly Bucky would have agreed with that sentiment.

Oh, Bucky.

“You don’t have to take the phone,” he grumbled at Sam.

“Okay,” said Sam. “But it’s Solitaire or nothing, dude. Don’t go digging for awful shit, cuz all you’ll find is awful shit.”

“You play Solitaire on your phone?” said Clint, from the very back of the van, where he was sitting with Wanda. They were holding hands.

“No,” said Steve, distractedly, “it’s Bridge, but against the computer.”

A moment of silence followed this pronouncement, after which Clint said, lightly, “I don’t have anything for that.”

Steve set his jaw and turned back towards the road, turning the phone over and over in his hands, willing himself not to look, not to read. Sam was right, of course; he wasn’t going to get anything from it but more anxiety, more anger, more fuss. _Fuss_ , that was such a Steve’s-mother word. _Enough fuss. No need for a fuss_. Such a no-nonsense word, a get-it-done-and-shut-up-about-it word, a word for a woman who’d never once gotten what she wanted and only rarely got what she needed. She’d probably be none too pleased with him now, but there was hardly anybody who was. Even Sam, probably the only person on earth who wasn’t totally fed up with him right now, was rapidly approaching being fed up with him.

So, enough fuss. Onto the open road.

They were somewhere in the twisty innards of Eastern Europe, places where the forests had come to claim back the land from the long, thin roads. Steve wondered if they’d met there because it was the best place for them, or because it was a place Natasha knew well. It could be both. Places Natasha felt she could hide were places anyone could hide, he figured.

She hadn’t been very forthcoming with her plans, and he couldn’t blame her. She’d answered his call on the radio, in a too-small, shuddering helicopter above the roiling ocean, hands trembling a little as a coming storm tossed the plane sideways like—well, unpleasantly. Sam behind him, Wanda and Clint and Scott crouched behind them both, still shocked to find themselves free.

She’d taken the call, and she’d given him coordinates and vanished.

“Whatever you do,” Clint had called from the back, where he was straddling the length of the tiny, tilting helicopter, an arm on each of the walls, “don’t go to _those_ coordinates.” Wanda and Scott were folded beneath his arms, without room for all three to stand up, Wanda with a thick red band around her neck, the impression of the collar Steve had ripped off her with more violence than he’d meant to, enough to scare her for a moment.

Clint had been right; the coordinates were a code, he understood it, and took them to a forest that Clint tersely informed them was “near Kharkiv.”

“Why?” Scott had asked. “What’s near Kharkiv?”

“Natasha,” Clint, Steve, and Sam had replied in unison.

And they’d been right; after a tense and quiet twenty minutes, during which Sam’s hand had found its way to Steve’s and Steve had folded his fingers in with Sam’s, Natasha had appeared, her long red hair gone completely, her hair hacked short enough to be a man’s, a muddy, ugly brown.

“You big softie,” Clint had said, his voice brimming with fondness.

She’d returned his smile with a grimace, a kind of near-smile, and gestured them to follow her down the road, and after a few moments walking they came across a dark (though, Steve had noted, not quite _suspiciously_ so) van parked next to a low, crumbling stone wall guarding an empty field. A few yards past, Steve could see train tracks.

“Natasha,” said Clint, almost hoarse, and glancing between them Steve sensed something enormous settling in the mud on the road, something ghostly and untouchable like fog, something that nonetheless clouded up the landscape.

“I knew you’d remember,” she’d replied, expressionless, toneless, eerily so, especially with her makeup scrubbed off, her hair gone, her normally perfectly arched eyebrows barely visible and plucked away. Like an unfinished mask of the woman Steve knew.

“Remember what?” Sam asked, his hand finally disconnecting from Steve’s as Clint swung his head to look at them.

“We caught a train here, once,” said Clint, and left it at that, left everyone else wondering what old string of shared history Natasha had tugged at to guide them here, what it meant in the secret language of old brothers-in-arms. Steve remembered shorthand like that, how it had developed during the war: how “the pub” had become shorthand for the agreement and loyalty that had formed the Howling Commandos in the first place; how “a Strasbourg situation” meant a total fucking disaster and “like in Florence” meant somebody was getting absolutely stupid drunk with a local or two and having some fun. The same language of shared survival was beginning to develop between him and Sam, really.

So they’d all piled into Natasha’s perfectly-designed-to-look-boring van, Clint and Wanda together in the back, Sam and Scott in the middle, and Natasha and Steve upfront, facing the dark black road. Steve didn’t know where they were going, but he was glad Natasha was driving. She probably knew more places to hide than the rest of them put together.

He wished she’d smiled at Clint, though. There was something about that refusal to play back into his fondness set Steve’s teeth on edge. He turned the phone in his hands again. Sam always said that for the most pugnacious son of a bitch in New York, Steve sure did get squirmy when other people disagreed with each other, especially if they did it with silence. Steve wished Sam would stop pointing out obvious things he’d somehow never noticed before.

They drove another hour or so, and just as the repetitive lull of the trees and the stars and the hum of the van was beginning to lull Steve into sleep, Natasha cut the engine, and led them through some thick trees and what looked to be a long-abandoned farm, picking her way deftly through the overgrown plough lines with the others trailing behind like ducklings following a mother. Steve felt sorry for Sam and the others he’d taken from the Raft, whose prison-issued shoes were flat and flimsy, and had to be soaked in mud and poked-through with brambles and rocks by now. He wished he’d thought to offer someone his own boots, but they were nearly there now, and the damage was done.

At the end of the rumpled field that had once fed a family was a stone house so small and unassuming it might have been part of the earth around it.

When they walked in they found a tight kitchen made all around of dark, soft wood, lit by a single, bare bulb, and Steve heard someone upstairs shift, heard footsteps on the landing. He looked around, without a clue who could be there—clearly someone with Natasha’s blessing, or she’d have a gun trained on them already, he was sure.

He didn’t know who he expected to come down the stairs—Bruce, perhaps, shuffling forward in his ill-fitting suits that always reminded Steve of dressing exclusively in hand-me-downs, of being too small for all of them? Tony, still with eyes darting and half-crazy with explosive grief, jittery and thrilled they’d fallen for it after all? Some ghost that bloomed out from the land, come to punish them all for trespassing, for so insistently thinking they knew best, knew better than the dead?

But it was Vision.

            He was dressed in jeans and a rumpled sweater, wearing only socks without shoes, looking like his usual self if his usual self had gotten a good shake or just emerged from a windstorm, his usual razor-sharp composure replaced with an oddly diminutive posture, his neck bent. Steve realized abruptly that the ceiling was too low for him on the stairs; he straightened his neck as he made his way down, but the strange reticence of his demeanor remained.

            “Vis,” Wanda breathed behind Steve, the first words she’d spoken since Steve ripped the collar off her neck, and wrenched herself away from Clint, dashing forwards and throwing her arms around Vision’s neck, standing on her tiptoes in her ruined shoes. After a beat, Vision returned the embrace, oddly careful, settling his arms around her torso and resting them there, not squeezing back.

            “I’m sorry,” Wanda whispered.

            “You don’t have to be,” Vision replied, raising his eyes to meet Steve’s gaze. “Captain, I—”

            “How’s Rhodes?” Sam demanded, suddenly, louder than anyone had yet spoken in the cramped little cabin. Steve turned to look at him, felt the very crown of his head brush the ceiling, but Sam didn’t meet his gaze, kept his eyes trained hard on Vision.

            Oh, Christ. Steve had heard only the briefest summary of what had happened to Rhodey—it seemed he’d been shot out of the sky, fallen freely and without control of his suit, hit the ground hard. Hadn’t gotten back up by the time Sam, Wanda, Clint, and Wanda were arrested. He’d gotten the whole story from Clint; Sam didn’t seem up to discussing it.

Vision fixed his gaze measuredly on Sam. Wanda released his neck. “Colonel Rhodes is stable,” he began.

“That’s not good enough,” Sam spat, his voice higher and harsher than Steve had ever heard it. He felt the ripple of Sam’s anger travel through the room, felt Clint and Scott both react to it, and for a moment wanted to snap at them both himself. Who were they to tell Sam off? Sam had gone to prison, been _beaten_ , by the looks of his face, for them. What the fuck had Vision done, exactly?

“I know that he’s being flown to New York City as soon as possible,” Vision continued, his voice even but measured, as if he was calculating how to make Sam less angry. “They may have already set off. The doctors in Germany believed his prognosis is—alright. They used the term ‘cautiously optimistic.’ He may never walk unassisted again.”

“Fuck,” Sam breathed. He’d stepped up to be even with Steve now, and they were shoulder to shoulder. Steve could feel him trembling every so slightly, and wished he could embrace him again, they way he had when he’d first arrived in his cell on the Raft, clinging and shaky and without a thought for anything but holding one another up, and steady.

“Sam, that’s not a bad report for less than twelve hours out,” Natasha said, sounding more like herself than she had all night, and Steve started to think it had been _less than twelve hours_ since he’d fled the airport with Bucky. Bucky, shit. And Rhodey too. And—

“It’s not good either,” Sam said, but the fire had gone out; he sounded no more angry at Natasha than he had at Bucky, when he’d been feeling him out in the warehouse back in Berlin. Careful, cagey, a little cold, but not angry. Sam was always careful.

Nat made that strange waxy, unnatural grimace-smile, like she was conceding the point, and then added quite quietly, “You’re not the only person in this room who cares about Rhodey, Sam.”

_No_ , Steve imagined Sam saying, _but Vision’s the only one in this room who shot him_. That’s probably what Steve would say. He was, in fact, considering saying it.

But Sam didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Instead he frowned, then relaxed his face, nodded to Natasha. “Of course,” he said, dropping his gaze to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Vision said, stilted, into the silence.

“Yeah,” said Sam.

 Silence settled heavy in the room, thick and stifling as humid air, and nobody seemed to know where to look. Wanda stayed next to Vision, but angled her body towards the others.

“Um. Am I ever gonna see my daughter again?” asked Scott, into the silence.

Everyone turned to look at him. Steve hadn’t known Scott _had_ a kid; going by Sam’s exhaled “ _shit_ ,” he hadn’t, either. That meant two men in this room with families waiting back home, with little mouths to feed. God _damn_ it, how could Steve have allowed this to happen.

Natasha stepped into the space between the landing, where Wanda and Vision still stood, and the doorway, where Steve, Sam, Clint, and Scott were still huddled.

“We’re going to get you back in contact with your families as soon as things have died down a little,” she said evenly, looking directly at Scott. It struck Steve that he was the only one in this little knot of men _without_ a family—Scott had a daughter, maybe others; Clint a whole family; Sam his brother and sister, both of whom meant the world to him. Steve, suddenly crushed by the weight of his nobody-ness, swallowed hard. Even in his first lifetime, he’d been without a family by the time he reached his majority; out here, he supposed he’d just blown a big hole through the only family he was likely to find.

Although, he thought, seeing the shine of the massive bruise on Sam’s face under the bare light in the kitchen, he hadn’t exactly done that alone.

“Will they be safe until then?” Clint said, jutting his head towards Scott a bit, as if he intended to cut into Natasha’s eyeline. “Have you talked to—what, Nick, anybody?”

Nat sighed and dropped her gaze to the floor, then looked up again. She said, “I talked to Pepper.”

“ _Pepper_?” Clint repeated, at the same time Scott said “You mean like Pepper Potts?”

“Yell it, why don’t you,” Natasha sighed, her hand cupped over the spot on her waist where, Steve remembered, she had the purple-grey reminder of the Winter Soldier’s bullet. He wondered if that was why. “Yes, Pepper Potts. We’ve been in touch. She’s got some very good lawyers trying to get you two back to your kids.” She looked at Sam. “And your sister has been in touch, I guess.” She sighed again, quirked her mouth. “I don’t know how all of that is going to play now you’re all jailbroke, but Pepper’s a good lady to have on your side. She’s going to keep your families safe, legally and—otherwise.”

Sam, Clint, and Scott were all nodding, a little dazedly, and Steve didn’t know about the others, but he felt about as optimistic about that as he did about anything; Pepper could, and would, move mountains. She’d written him, back in 2014 when he and Sam were first starting out to try to find Bucky, to offer her “services in any capacity that you may find helpful, accommodating, or comforting.” She’d written it by hand, on heavy cardstock with stationary. He’d really appreciated the whole thing. 

“For now,” Natasha continued, her voice so evidently weary Steve felt a flair of intense sympathy for her, “I think everyone should get some sleep. There’s three rooms up there, you guys can figure it out. I’ll be down here.” She gestured towards the little room past the kitchen.

Thus dismissed, the escapees of the Raft tramped upstairs behind Vision, mumbling amongst themselves. Steve heard Clint, taking up the rear, inquire about toothbrushes.

He turned to Natasha.

“I can’t thank you enough,” he said, gesturing a little with both hands, as if to encompass all the things he owed her, all the yawning space where he could attempt to place adequate apologies and gratitude, never filling it or coming close.

She looked down and smiled the tiniest bit, huffed an almost-laugh, the corners of her mouth actually quirking up for the first time all night. “No, you can’t,” she said, and then looked back up at him. With her hair gone, her makeup scrubbed away, dressed in a heavy, oversized jacket that looked like a brown sandwich bag, she looked a lot younger than she usually did, a lot more tired. He was very aware, in a way he usually wasn’t, how much shorter she was than him. She swallowed, holding his gaze. “But I’d do it again,” she added, looking him hard in the eye.

“Thank you,” he said, heavily, his chest clouding with grief—for Peggy, for Bucky, for Howard, for Tony, for everything he’d been reasonably sure of a few days ago. He should get out of the habit, he thought, of being sure of anything.

She nodded and broke eye contact at last, looking up the stairs. “You’re gonna get the worst bunk, Rogers,” she said, and he recognized the dismissal.

“Tony will forgive you,” Steve said, and Natasha’s face hardened, flattened, the twinkle of affection, of knowing, shared togetherness, vanished from her face.

“Go to bed, Steve,” she said, as coldly as he’d ever heard her speak, and Steve bit his tongue and hurried up the stairs.

At the landing he saw two closed doors, a bathroom behind a door propped open with a heavy wooden bucket. The third door was still open, so Steve went in.

Inside was lit by a single, old lamp that cast a brownish-yellow light. Steve saw there was one bed, rickety on an old brass frame, topped with a quilt that looked handmade. Sam sat on it, cross-legged, inspecting the shiner on his face with his phone’s camera.

“Too bad about your good looks,” he said, and Sam looked up, folding the phone into his lap like he was embarrassed to be caught looking.

“Yeah, well, I’m just glad to still have all my teeth,” he said, smiling so Steve could see them, see the sweet little gap between them that Steve always thought was so—cute, even if that wasn’t exactly a word one used for other men’s faces.

“Thank God for that,” he said, stepping fully into the room and closing the door behind him. “We bunking together?”

Sam scratched his chin. “Seems so. Wanda took the smallest room, Vision ‘doesn’t require sleep’”—Steve snorted at Sam’s air quotes—“and Clint and Scott dibsed the room with two beds. So here we are, Cap.”

He raised his eyebrows, more acknowledging the potential for a dirty joke than making one. Steve smiled and pulled open the top drawer of the dresser by the door.

“Any chance there’s anything we can change into in here?”

“Me, maybe,” said Sam, rising from the bed and beginning to wriggle out of his blue prison-smock. “Since I’m, you know, normal-person size—”

He cut himself off with a hiss, and Steve turned to see Sam’s torso was a bloom of red and purple, radiating from a sickly-looking center on his ribs.

“ _Jesus_!” Steve yelped, crossing the room in one step and setting his hands on Sam’s forearm and shoulder, turning him towards the light so he could look better. “Jesus, Jesus _Christ_ , Sam, is this from—”

“Don’t get worked up, man, please,” Sam groaned, sinking back onto the bed and grimacing. “It’s fine.”

“It is _not_ ,” said Steve, crouching down to inspect Sam’s torso in the weak light, reminded with sudden, almost frightening force of a different cramped bedroom with an old stained brass bed in it, of being the boy on the bed insisting _it’s fine it’s fine_ while someone else forced him to stay still and felt for broken ribs. He could hear Bucky’s tongue cluck, his exasperation and his worry. _I swear to Gawd, Steve, it’s like you like getting hit._

He took a deep breath, pulled himself away from that place, the apartments and streets and rooms in his memory that seemed more and more, these days, like intricate constructions, dollhouses or sets from a play, waiting for actors or a curtain.

He focused his vision on Sam’s torso, then looked up to his face. He was bent down, had to cant his neck up to see Sam’s eyes; his hands were set on the bed, resting on either side of Sam like he could keep him perfectly safe and still right there.

“I have to check if your ribs are broken,” he said, feeling like an actor reciting the wrong lines in a play. _That’s Bucky’s line_.

Sam wrinkled his nose. “I’d know if my ribs were broken, Steve.”

“You might not,” Steve said, ready to draw on a myriad of personal experiences, but Sam let out a whistling kind of breath and mumbled something that sounded enough like “fine” for Steve to proceed.

With a deep breath, Steve leaned back on his heels and set both hands, as gently as he could, on the outer rings of Sam’s massive bruise, working his way around and inward, pressing gently, waiting for a response beyond Sam’s slightly shallow breathing.

“Okay,” he said, frowning in concentration, as his hands reached the ugly, yellowish nexus of Sam’s bruise. “I’m sorry, I just gotta—” He pushed, and Sam winced hard and made a tiny noise of stifled pain. “Sorry,” Steve chanted, “sorry, sorry. Just tell me if the pressure is causing—”

“Steve, I’m a medic,” Sam said, his teeth clearly gritted. “I know.”

“Okay,” Steve said, pulling his hands away, immediately missing the warmth of Sam’s skin, even if it was a little feverish. “Okay, sorry. Uh, cough, please.”

Sam faked a quick cough, then turned back and forth and took deep breaths at Steve’s request. Steve watched the way his ribs and muscles moved under his discolored skin, found himself looking at Sam’s belly button, his nipples, the wiry curls on his upper chest and their satellite colony close to his waistband. 

“It’s fine,” Sam said, sounding weary, but not annoyed. Something else.

“Uh, just. Laugh real quick,” Steve said, looking up at Sam’s face again.

“Excuse me?”

“My mom always made me,” Steve muttered. “Pain with laughter is a sign.”

Sam looked at him for a moment.

“Ha-ha,” he said, flatly, into the silent room.

 A beat later and Steve felt something coming up out of him, something alarming in its uncontrollable bubbling urgency, and he thought for a wild moment he was going to be sick when suddenly he realized instead he was _laughing_ —really laughing, laughing hard and stupid and Sam was too, ducking his head and resting his hand on Steve’s shoulder, Steve’s hand on Sam’s knee as they both shook with big, ugly, stupid laugher, laughter that got funnier the longer it went on, a self-sustaining loop of silliness.

“Okay,” Sam gasped, when they’d simmered down into just quiet giggles, and he tugged a little on Steve’s shirt sleeve until Steve rose and sat on the bed next to him, “okay, _now_ my ribs hurt.”

“Mine too,” Steve admitted, a giggle wiggling out of his throat as he said it, “so I think you’re fine.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, lightly, his cheeks perfect apples even with the bruise, lovely round shapes rising out from his huge smile, in the hazy light, and then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Steve’s.

_Why is he doing that?_ Steve thought, and then he realized, _He’s kissing me_ , and the realization was like an electric current through his legs and belly and his arms, which flung up uncoordinatedly to grab onto Sam’s bare arms, and he remembered, abruptly, about kissing back.

So he did, a lot, and no, it wasn’t his first kiss since 1945, but one of precious little in his life—Natasha in that shopping mall, Peggy in the car and a few other times, the woman in London who wanted to _thank him_ , one chorus girl named Alice, a few anonymous men when he snuck into Manhattan, Jed McDaniel just once, Edith Watson from school, Eddie Meyer from school—

And none of them, not even with Peggy, like this, because this was unhurried, honest, easy. It wasn’t to prove a point and it wasn’t a secret. It wasn’t nervous or rushed or embarrassed. It was just… _kissing_. Just two animals trying to get as close to being one thing as they possibly could. 

Sam’s hand rose and cupped Steve’s face, and they broke the kiss.

“I hope that was okay,” Sam said, and Steve was close enough to see the happy flush in his face. He thought about kissing Sam’s cheek.

“That was okay,” he breathed.

It was a valid question. It hadn’t been okay with Eddie or Jed or the nameless boys; Steve had barely known until Eddie kissed him, the summer they were thirteen, that other boys had ever felt what he did. His mother never told him _not_ to be— _gay_ , because she didn’t have to, she’d never once expressed an opinion on the subject. Nobody had, not even Eddie Meyer, who denied ever knowing him when the summer ended, or the man from Manhattan who’d threatened to beat Steve senseless when Steve tried to walk to the train with him. The closest anybody really came was when somebody called him a fairy while kicking the shit out of him, which happened pretty often. But they called Bucky a fairy, to get a rise out of him; guys like that called everyone shit like that. Maybe Steve more often, but that was for being skinny.

And then he woke up from a long, cold, silent dream to discover that the year was two-thousand-twelve, that men walked down the street holding hands with other men, in New York, and women with other women, that you could _marry_ another man, that people could say “she and her wife” and it wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Men called each other _baby_ in public, women with short hair and jeans on could kiss under a marquee in Times Square, just the quietest and easiest kiss, and everyone was expected to have strong opinions, positive or negative, on the precise ways in which these people—gay people, LGBT people—conducted themselves in public and private both. Steve learned pretty soon after they met that Tony Stark had, in 2004 and before he was Iron Man, made a minor splash in the news by making a lot of noisy comments about how gay people should be allowed to get married. That was nice of him, Steve supposed.

For his part, Steve never had much in the way of Big Thoughts about it. He knew what he liked, what he wanted, and knew how most people tended to feel about it. He knew that no amount of people feeling that way about it could made the feeling of kissing a beautiful boy any less sparkling and perfect, just as he knew that all the magic generated when a boy making him blush could keep him safe when somebody decided they didn’t like it.

He swallowed, and looked Sam in the face, studied his familiar sweet features in this new burst of light that kissing always brought, like every detail was for him now, every part of Sam a tiny gift to open, treasure, marvel at.

“More than okay,” he added.

Sam smiled and kissed his cheek. Steve cupped the back of his head and drew Sam against him, and soon they were both lying down, half-undressed to simulate pajamas, Sam still bare-chested, on top of the blankets. Feeling the weight of exhaustion on him, Steve reached out, fumbled blindly to turn off the light on the bedside, his body still curled to Sam.

Once the dark swallowed them, and their eyes adjusted enough to see the moonlight seeping in from the window, Sam let out a big, shuddering breath.

“It’s the noise,” he said, finally, and it was the same knowing tone that he’d caught Steve with two years ago, when he’d said _It’s your bed, isn’t it?_ , and Steve had felt, for the first time in two years and the new century, that he might not be alone.

But he didn’t know what noise Sam meant.

“Which one?” he said, finally, when Sam didn’t explain.

He heard the deep breath next to him. Smelled—well, Sam’s smell. He turned onto his side, facing Sam, who lay faceup, looking at the ceiling.

“The noise,” Sam said, “when Rhodey—when he hit the ground. Just this, this _thump_ ”—he slammed his palm down on the blanket, a muffled crash—“and even if they’ve got their gear, even though Rhodey had all his, his whole suit on, there’s, like, it’s kinda soft, somehow. You can hear it. That it’s a _body_ hitting the ground like that.”

“God,” Steve whispered, so close to Sam he barely had to speak. “I can’t imagine, Sam. I’m so sorry.”

He could imagine, or rather, he _had_ imagined. Thousands of times, thinking of Bucky, wondering if he was dead before he hit the ground or if the impact did it, if he had time to think, to pray. If he tried to call for help or for Steve. He’d imagined, a lot, but he’d never heard it. Not like Sam had heard Rhodey. And, of course, Riley.

Steve wondered if he was allowed to state the obvious, here, or if he should wait for Sam to say it.

Sam, as he so often did, made the decision for him.

“And it—it was so much like. Like Riley,” Sam said, voice quavering, and Steve snaked his arm around Sam’s bare shoulders, surprising himself with how easily he carried out the movement once it occurred to him. His body fit more easily with Sam’s.

“The noise?” Steve asked, when Sam didn’t continue.

Sam nodded; Steve felt it, against his shoulder, more than he saw it.

“And—watching.” He stopped, and Steve could hear him swallow, almost hear him resolve to get through this story. “You know, it. It was a lot like with Riley. It happened so fast, both times, man, it’s like—like I didn’t even realize, I don’t know, realize we were really fighting until he was—until somebody took a hit.”

Steve nodded, and he knew the feeling, the sudden stomach plummet, the switch from half-joyous adrenaline to screeching panic, the abrupt landing back in your own body, the sense that this was really happening. They weren’t toy guns and this wasn’t a street fight. Nobody was going to stop because somebody got hurt too bad. The blood was real and fires weren’t going out any time soon. It could still jar you, even two years into a war.

“When Riley,” Sam began, then took a shuddering breath. “Riley, when he—God, I hate talking about this. But I never told you, uh. He said. I mean, I don’t know. God.” He paused, laughed bitterly, shook his head. In the dark Steve saw him press the heel of his hand to his eye, the way he always did when he was about to cry, or already crying.

(Steve had seen Sam cry four times: when they talked about their parents and Sam talked about his mom, when his sister had her third baby, when he’d broken his femur a few months before Novi Grad, and when they’d watched _It’s a Wonderful Life_.)

(Sam had never seen Steve cry, but he’d seen him very close twice: when he told Sam about his baby brother, who’d died in his first month, and when they were looking for Bucky, early on, and found an abandoned laboratory with no evidence, no leads, no signs of life, but half an empty cryo-tank with fingernail scratches on the inside of the glass—deep gouges for the left hand, little scar-lines for the right.)

Steve waited. Sam would tell him when he was ready.

“The last thing Riley said,” Sam whispered, finally, “was me. I mean. He yelled for me. I think, anyways. It’s probably wishful thinking.”

“Oh, Sam,” Steve says. He wishes he had something more to say.

“I have this theory,” Sam mumbles, into Steve’s neck now, “that you kind of…half of what you remember about the worst fight of your life is gonna be stuff you learned later, or stuff you dreamed up. Your brain…decorates it. Embellishes.”

Steve could understand that. He shifted his head so his cheek was pressed to Sam’s forehead. Sam sniffled.

“ _God_ , I keep hearing it. He took the shot for _me_ , Steve.”

Steve swallowed, consciously kept himself from squeezing Sam’s shoulder more tightly. It wouldn’t help Sam to know that, no matter how dearly he cared for Rhodey, Steve was almost euphorically grateful that it had been him tumbling out of the sky, and not Sam.

Sam didn’t need that right now, though.

“I’m glad you’re both okay,” said Steve, dumbly, unable to think of anything better.

“But he’s _not_ ,” Sam replied, and moved away from Steve a little on the bed, grunted as his poor ruined ribs shifted. Steve winced in sympathy. His own wounds—from the airport, from Tony—had already begun to heal. He hated that his face would bear no trace of all this long before Sam’s; that Sam’s body would bear witness to history Steve could leap away from.

But, Sam sometimes said, the body can remember things long after there’s any mark. Sometimes things the brain can’t even remember. Or sometimes just not the same way.

Sam was breathing a little too hard, and pushing the heel of his hand to his face again.

 “I was just up there, just, just I just moved out of the way, I didn’t mean—and then I was just— _watching_.” He stopped, and Steve could hear him swallow, almost hear him resolve to get through this story. _Just up there to watch_ , he’d told Steve, the first time they ever talked about Riley. The first and, Steve realized, one of the last. In two years, Riley’s ghost had haunted them just as persistently as Bucky’s, but Riley didn’t have the luxury of reappearing, even broken or different or without a name. Riley, for better or worse, had stayed dead. Nobody was trying to speak him back to himself, the way Steve did with Bucky.

Sam had stopped talking. Steve waited, watching Sam’s silhouette, watching him open and close his mouth.

“And it was my fault,” Sam whispered, so quietly Steve would have missed it if he hadn’t been so close, if he hadn’t been near enough that Sam must have felt Steve’s breath on his neck. 

“Sam,” said Steve, at once, shocked to hear Sam say such a thing—Sam, who had told him, a hundred times, what wasn’t his fault. How nothing that had happened to Bucky was his fault, how none of the fallout from Shield’s collapse was his fault, how Peggy not remembering him wasn’t his fault, how all the dead in Novi Grad weren’t his fault. How the crash of the _Valkyrie_ wasn’t his fault, how the years it took to find him weren’t his fault, how Bucky’s abandonment in the bottom of a fucking icy ravine wasn’t his fault. That the uglier tactics of the army and government he’d willingly played puppet for weren’t his fault—and Nick’s jabs about the greatest generation all those years ago weren’t a joke; there was shit Steve knew about and didn’t think hard enough at the time, like the army’s segregation and the interment camps, and there was shit he hadn’t learned until the other side of the century. That his family’s poverty, his mother’s constant stress, her weariness, her short life and undignified death, his own always-failing body weren’t his fault. That nobody he’d seen die—not his parents, not Dr. Erskine, not men in his unit or men he’d known or talked to, not the victims of Hydra he and the others arrived too late to save, not the German soldiers barely out of school they’d left injured on their way to the front, not the 16-year-old French teenager who’d bled out in his arms, not the kids who joined the army because he said so on posters and then didn’t get to come home, none of them—were his fault.

_You aren’t ever at fault for things other people do_ , he’d said, so many times, _and you aren’t at fault for things you didn’t have any control over. You aren’t at fault for mistakes you made while you were seriously and conscientiously trying to do the right thing. Don’t carry that, man. You don’t have to carry that._

“Sam, it’s _not_ your fault,” he said, finding his voice, and he knew—knew, because he’d had it happen to him, because he’d had it explained by Sam itself—that Sam’s breath was coming faster because the past was rushing up to meet the present. He didn’t like the term “flashback,” he’d told Sam once, because it wasn’t going back, or moving at all—it was like the past, his own history, ambushed him, plumed up around him like smoke, trapped him. He knew that the sound of Rhodey hitting the ground—or maybe the sound of Riley—was all Sam could really hear, knew every cell in his body was suddenly attuned to that remembered sound. “ _None_ of this is your fault.”

Sam took several long, shaky breaths. “Man,” he whispered, “he took a shot meant for me. And then he fell, and I was—was just— _watching._ ”

_It’s like I was just up there to watch_ , Sam had said, in their second ever conversation, talking about Riley. When he’d said it, Steve had briefly felt the whipping blizzard wind, the cavernous silence of the ground rushing by beneath him, had been clinging again to the side of a train, staring at the place where Bucky had been and wasn’t anymore, couldn’t ever be anymore. No more do-overs, he’d thought. _Like I was just up there to watch._

Christ.

Steve grabbed Sam’s hand, and squeezed it hard.

“Come back to me,” he said, because Sam said that to him, sometimes, though it sounded more pitiful from Steve than it ever had from Sam. “Rhodey’s going to be alright. Nothing that happened to him was your fault. Nothing—none of what’s _happened_ is your fault. None of it.” He swallowed, squeezed Sam’s hand again, and tried to remember something Sam had said about Bucky a lot. “You don’t have to apologize for surviving.”

Sam made a little huff that might be a laugh; he knew Steve was parroting him back, and Steve hoped he didn’t mind, hoped it helped. He couldn’t stand the idea that Sam would blame himself for what had happened to Rhodey, let alone that he’d feel guilty it wasn’t him. The mere thought of Sam—who didn’t have armor like Rhodey did, who _couldn’t_ have survived a fall that broke Rhodey’s spine from inside the War Machine suit—taking that shot, Sam tumbling through the air, dead long before he hit the ground—the mere _thought_ of Sam going in Rhodey’s place made Steve’s face hurt, made his chest tighten and his heart pound. He curled tighter against Sam.

“It’s not your fault,” he said again, weakly, and Sam shifted, turned his face to Steve, and in the dark, backlit by the moon, Steve could only see his eyes. They were wet.

“I keep _hearing_ it,” Sam said, and closed his eyes.

Steve touched his face, gentle on the bruises. He inhaled.

When Steve was in the hospital, after Bucky broke his eye socket and shattered his cheekbone, pelvis, and every single one of his ribs before fishing him out of the Potomac, he’d been in more pain than he’d thought possible to survive, physically. His uselessly overzealous metabolism ate through the sedatives and painkillers the doctors tried to give him, and in the end they’d needed to use a combination of large-animal tranquilizers and an experimental mechanism Tony invented and had explained later as “localized paralysis” to get him through surgery. Most of the time there, he’d been delirious with pain as his bones knitted themselves back together under his skin—so fast, Natasha had said later, that you could _hear_ it, like bamboo.

Sam stayed, pretty much the whole time. He played Steve his Marvin Gaye, played him _Trouble Man_ , which kept him rooted in this century when he woke up bleary and confused and in too much pain to scream, and he’d read to him. From magazines, from novels, from biographies, everything he could get his hands on without leaving Steve alone too long. He’d stayed and stayed and stayed.

Sam, he knew, was still hearing it.

They didn’t have a speaker here for _Trouble Man_ , much less a book. Steve didn’t dare pick up his phone to find something to read there, didn’t have the strength for the news.

“I’m gonna tell you a story,” he said, finally. He scooted back, just a bit, to allow himself to put an arm around Sam’s shoulders, bring him close, settle Sam’s head on his shoulder. He did it naturally, as if he’d spent many nights in bed with lovers, close together. In fact, he had spent none.

It felt nice anyways.

“This is a story about me being a dumbass, and Bucky being a bigger dumbass,” he continued, and let himself smile a little bit, because Bucky had, when he’d remembered too. And because it was one of those stories that had made him pissy while it was happening, had _sucked_ , but as soon as it was over, as soon as they’d clambered off the ice truck, shivery and all limbs, had become hilarious. “So it starts with Bucky’s first real girlfriend—I say real, we were sixteen—whose name was Dolores. He called her Dot, and he liked to act like some kind of big man around her. So, one day, we went to this fair…”

 

That night, or rather, for a few hours that morning, Steve dreamed about the movie theater he’d worked in as a teenager, small and overheated, and the projection box in the back of the cinema, up a rickety ladder untouched since its installation in the early ’20s. He dreamed he was inside the projection box, paying no attention to the movie he’d seen and heard a hundred times, and his head was heavy and sleepy. He was wondering how much time he had before he had to change the reels when a voice called out from the audience: “Hey, everyone, look, it’s Captain America!”

Steve started and peered out of the box, couldn’t see into the crowd well enough to know who had shouted but saw the screen: not his own face, but Bucky’s, young and clean-shaven—possibly before he’d even started shaving. His face was pinched in worry, without a trace of amusement or annoyance to water it down—just anxiety and fear, the almost-comical frown he always made when he was really upset and stressed, his lips pursed out and his eyebrows crushed together.

“Steve, fuck, Steve, Christ, _Christ_ ,” Bucky said, and then he wasn’t on the screen, or there was no screen, because Steve could see him properly, and Steve could feel cold air on his bare back and across his chest, and felt damp fabric—his own shirt—bunched next to his hand. He turned from Bucky to see it, and saw it was mostly red. Bucky continued his litany of cursing and half-prayers, and Steve suddenly knew when this was. Oh, God.

The pain hit the moment Steve realized he should have felt it—pain in his torso, his back, his face, Christ _his nose_ —his groin, his teeth, his wrists, his belly, everything. He took a massive, stuttering breath, felt his chest scream, his throat constrict, his eyes water. _Oh, God, oh, shit, that’s enough, that’s enough, now, lemme die now._

“Steve, Jesus, Steve,” Bucky continued, and now Steve could hear the wetness, the panic in his voice, squinted at Bucky and saw his face—and it looked so _young_ now, Bucky, fifteen, a tiny bit of young-boy roundness on his cheeks, still—was wet with tears.

“Steve, okay, listen, it’s—please, can you look at me? Can you talk? Do you know when your mom’ll be home?”

Steve had no notion of how to answer this question, and the idea of trying to talk made his head hurt even more, and oh, God, how were his _teeth_ aching?

“Steve, c’mon, don’t—stay awake, don’t black out again, okay, little guy, please? I’m gonna take care of you, really, please just stay—can you open your eyes? Steve? Open your _eyes_ , Steve!”

Bucky’s shout made Steve’s eyes fly open—he didn’t mean to close them—and he squinted at Bucky’s shining face. He looked fuzzy, and the streetlight behind his head gave him a funny halo. _Angel-Bucky_ , he thought, fuzzily, _angel of death Bucky_.

For a split second, Bucky’s face above him was older, darker, thinner, masked, framed in long dirty hair, and his eyes were empty of any recognition.

_No no no_ —

He blinked, and Bucky’s face was young and almost plump again, and tears were dripping off his chin.

“Steve,” he said, thickly, “I gotta get you up. I gotta get you off the street.”

In the back of his head, Steve thought, _I ain’t standing if the Virgin Mother herself came down here and asked me to_.

Aloud, he kind of gurgled.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Bucky said, and he set his hands under Steve’s armpits. Even the tiny jostling sent shockwaves of shuddering pain through Steve, set everything on fire again. _Stop, please don’t,_ he begged, in his head.

“On three,” Bucky said, adjusting his grip a little, and Steve felt something drip out of his mouth. _Fuck fuckity fuck_.

“One.”

Steve’s chest was already contracting, breaking, on fire, frozen, all of it, every kind of pain he could imagine.

“Two,” Bucky breathed, and tightened his grip further. Steve’s head lolled and he wished he could scream.

“Three,” said Bucky, and heaved, and Steve’s world exploded into pain, and he woke up.

It took a moment for the world to orient itself around him—he was in bed, not a cold street, and he was somewhere in the Ukrainian countryside, not Brooklyn. His heart was pounding but his ribs weren’t shattered, his kidney wasn’t bruised enough to turn his urine ruddy brown. Beside him, Sam hummed in his sleep without waking up, make a little noise like he was thinking hard about something. He was a little tense even asleep; Steve wondered what he was dreaming about.

_The worst fight of your life_.

That’s what Steve had been dreaming about, anyways.

When Steve was fourteen, he’d been walking home from work when he’d heard a kind of panicked squawking happening in the alley that separated his building from Bucky’s. Fearing an injured animal, he’d entered the alleyway intend on helping, only to discover instead four boys—among them Alex Gray and Tommy McLean, a pair who’d made nothing less than their personal mission to beat Steve up as many times as they could in school—in the process of roughing up a kid who looked about eleven.

Steve had immediately felt an anger billow in his chest, bloom, overwhelm him, almost make him sick—the kind of anger that got him _in trouble_ , the kind he could never contain, the kind that had him hurling schoolbooks across the classroom, driving his fist into his father’s belly, hollering and tackling, the kind that ate him alive.

But Steve didn’t have time to consider that this would get him _in trouble_ , didn’t have time to consider the angles, because this anger didn’t let him, this anger burning in his belly and crashed him into things, make his limbs shake and his face red and hot.

A few years before, when he was still in school and regularly interacted with Alex Gray and Tommy McLean, he’d have said something like _Hey! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?_

But he was fourteen now, had been working for two years, had helped pay for the food his mother set on the table and spent his days with grown men who talked like it, absent any clucking mothers, teachers, or Church ladies to tell him not to listen to such talk. So he drew in a breath that made his lungs feel flat and yelled, “What the fuck are you doing?”

The boys turned, and Alex Gray didn’t release the kid from the headlock he had him in. Steve didn’t know the other two boys by name, but had seen their faces before, could guess they were brothers by their identical flat noses. He definitely knew Alex Gray and Tommy McLean, though he hadn’t talked to either since he’d dropped out of school two years before, never coming back after Christmas. The day before the holiday, Tommy had dangled Steve upside down by his ankles, dumping his head in the snow and laughing as pencil stubs he’d snatched off desks fell out of his pants pockets, because Alex had dared him to.

Steve swallowed. Alex and Tommy had both grown significantly since Steve had last seen them, and now fairly towered over Steve, even though he’d gained two inches in height since he left school himself. Their shoulders had started to broaden, and when Alex spoke, his voice was deeper than Steve remembered it.

“Well, _shit_ ,” he said, jostling the little boy in the headlock, “we thought you’d died.”

Tommy laughed like this was a truly genius joke, and Alex did an exaggerated imitation of a coughing fit, the kind Steve used to get in class (the kind he still got), hacking wetly into the little boy’s ear as he did.

“Didn’t think you’d made it through the year,” Tommy added, before turning to the other two boys. “This little faggot used to go to school with Alex and me.”

 “Pretty pathetic,” Steve added, over Alex’s continued exaggerated coughs, “that you’re beating up ten-year-olds.”

One of the boys Steve didn’t know turned then. “How about you stay out of shit you don’t understand?” he’d said, in the faux-pleasant, businesslike tones boys always used right before they kicked the utter shit out of you.

“I know that’s a really big category for you,” Steve had snarled, stepping closer, “but the math here seems pretty fucking simple.”

“Rogers,” Alex barked, “last chance. Get the fuck out of here and we’ll leave your pansy ass alone.”

“Pretty rich to call me a pansy,” Steve replied, “when you’re the only struggling to keep hold of a ten-year-old.”

The boy Steve didn’t know, the one pretending to be friendly, stepped closer, loomed over Steve, and said, in that fake pleasant voice, “I’m sure you have somewhere else to be.” He stretched his lips into a weird, grimacing fake-smile, and clearly thought this looming was going to scare Steve, do anything other than make him all the more furious and determined to fight his way out like a scared cat.

“Yeah!” Tommy called. “Get on home to that whore mother of yours!”

Steve saw red for real, then.

Later, he would learn the details—that the little boy had an older brother, who’d snitched on somebody’s cousin to the cops, gotten him in trouble for bootlegging, something like that. He would learn that in the scuffle, the kid must have gotten loose, because he’d told just about the entirety of East Flatbush about it. He would learn that after he dashed past the looming boy to sock Tommy McLean in the jaw, the other three had grabbed him, pinned him, beaten him until he stopped trying to move, and left him there. He learned all this from Bucky, who found him.

“ _Found you_!” Bucky would shout later. “On my way home from _work_ , oh, there’s a _dead guy_ in the _alley_ , I better call the fucking _morgue_ , but no, it’s not a _dead guy_ , it’s fuckin’ _Steve Rogers_ bleeding out the _ass_ , not to mention every other _hole in him_ , cuz he just had to get _involved_ in some fuckin’ _shit that didn’t concern him_ , you dumb fucking _prick_!”

In the end, he’d had broken ribs, a broken nose (the second of the three times he broke his nose before 1943), and a bruised kidney. The last one they knew about in particularly astonishing detail, as when Bucky hoisted Steve up the stairs of his apartment building, Steve had, more or less unconscious at the time, peed a bit. The pee, Bucky informed Steve later with indignation and florid detail, was reddish brown.

Back in the present, Steve sat up in bed without waking Sam. It would be dawn soon; Steve could tell by the way the blackness outside was waning into gray. He had to think. Had to make a plan.

He didn’t dare glance at his phone. Not yet.

Clint and Scott needed legal representation, needed to get back to their families. He could trust Clint on his own, but with Ross as angry as he surely was, and with this much blood in the water, for once in his life Steve was favoring doing things on the straight and narrow. Or, at least, the kind of straight and narrow. Nat had said Pepper was handling that. Steve wasn’t quite surprised—Pepper, it seemed, made it a habit to handle as much as possible—but even if they did break up, her primary loyalty had to be to Tony. Hopefully she could blame Steve for everything.

That was Clint and Scott sorted.

Natasha, of course, could take care of herself. Could, and would. If she wanted to include him in that, he’d find out.

Wanda was trickier. She was just a kid—twenty-five, but with half her youth stolen. Steve wasn’t stupid, and he appreciated the bind Wanda put Tony in, that he’d probably really felt he was doing right by her. But Tony so often confused the first solution to come to him with the best one.

She’d have to lie low. Really low. She was the one they were most worried about, of the Raft escapees, he was sure. Which made sense, really—Scott, Clint, and Sam, no matter how extraordinary, were only human men. Deprived of their tools and their freedom, they were only ever going to be exceptional men, and the rules of physics and gravity could hold them. Wanda, not so much. Wanda, in the shock collar—he shuddered even remembering it.

During the war, Steve and the others spent a lot of time chasing down leads for the secret labs Hydra had set up. They almost always found them empty; sometimes, they were abandoned in a rush. Those were the worst, because the signs of what had been happening there remained: manacles and barred windows, hypodermic needles, tubes, bloodstains. A bone saw, once. Cages.

The worst was in the middle of 1944, when they’d found the cages still occupied, each with a limp body with a neat bullet hole in the head, just as the other Winter Soliders had been in their cryotanks, but without the benefit of preservation. Thirty cages, each with a rotting body inside. Bucky had thrown up and tried to hide it from the others. Nobody’d blamed him.

The collar had been so much like that—Steve knew he’d scared her, ripping it off, breaking it in his hands like it was made of cardboard. He didn’t like to give himself away like that, to let anybody see how easily he could crush everything in this world of ever-smaller and more delicate technology. In the moment, he hadn’t cared.

Wanda, then, presented a problem. Her and Vision both, really, but Vision was not, at least, in clear violation of international law. Though—on the one hand, his presence in this house might change that. On the other, it was unclear to what effect the Accords were actually law and to what extent it was just Ross at this point. Maybe those two could use a lawyer, too.

No. They needed to hide. Separately, too, though Steve wouldn’t pretend to be so naïve as to have missed the way they’d gravitated toward one another. Maybe not separately all the time. They’d just have to see.

So—Clint and Scott to the lawyers. Wanda and Vision to the wind. Natasha to her own devises, and Bucky to the king of Wakanda.

That left Sam. And Steve.

Time to get out of bed.


	2. Part Two

Part Two

 

Books | August 1st, 2017 issue

“Life Leases” is an intelligent survey of the stuff that makes an extraordinary life

            _A historian’s inventory of Captain America’s legacy focuses on the belongings he left behind, and who laid claim to them._

            By Alex White

 

            In 1995, as part of a year-long series to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. quietly opened an exhibition titled “Captain America: the Man at War,” which displayed memorabilia relating to the Captain America mythos—and, perhaps just as importantly, the Steve Rogers one—in a rough chronological order. Many of the items, including a motorcycle owned and operated by Rogers, were on display to the public for the first time.

            The motorcycle’s central place in the exhibition was something like peacocking, as it was far from guaranteed. The Smithsonian first attempted to purchase the motorcycle in 1987, from a family of Swiss farmers with whom Rogers had left the bike shortly before his death.

            “He gave me a bit of money, and promised to come back for it,” Laurette Paget, then fifty-seven and living permanently in London, told the _Times_ in 1988. She was only fourteen when Steve Rogers pushed his spluttering motorcycle up the mud path that led to her family’s small farm outside of what is now Val d’Anniviers, in Switzerland. She was the first person in to wake up, she recalled, because she had to milk the cows.

            “He was very polite,” she remembered, “and he spoke pretty good French.”

            This was March, 1945—the exact date has been lost in the Paget family’s collective memory—in the last few weeks of Rogers’s life in the twentieth century, and young Laurette Paget helped him wheel it to the side of the house. Rogers thanked her, and walked alone back down the road; to what end, Paget never learned. Later that morning, Laurette’s brother threw a blanket over it, and when Rogers never returned, the family didn’t know what to do with the bike. Eventually, the news of Rogers’s plane crash reached the Pagets, and, when throwing it away or breaking it down for parts seemed callous, they put it into the family barn. There it remained a further ten years before anyone in the family quite realized its value as a historical and sentimental object.

            In 1955, the oldest Paget son, Jean, opened a café not far from the farm; seeking unique decoration, he mounted the captain’s old motorcycle on the roof of the café’s awning. The town—then called St-Luc—rapidly becoming a major winter tourism center due to its proximity to the Alps, and as Europe rebuilt and Americans became richer, the little café—called simply Petit Place—with the giant motorcycle became a word-of-mouth sensation. As early as 1957and as recently as 1985, the spot was included in American tourist guides for the area; it was referenced in a handful of films, including “The White Tower” (1950) and, most famously, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969).

            In 1987, the Smithsonian institute attempted to buy the motorcycle from Jean Paget and his family; the family refused to part with it. The ensuing legal battle—the subject of an excellent Hulu documentaryin 2015—eventually involved the American, Swiss, and French governments, and reached such a fever pitch that a _Time_ magazine articlecould, in 1991, argue without blushing that “ex-hippies, veterans, and young people might all be swayed in the coming Presidential election by the question of Cap’s bike.” The whole debacle was the subject of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, a series of op-eds by the likes of Alan Dershowitzand Howard Zinn, and prompted Barbara Walters to invite all surviving members of Rogers’s wartime unit, the Howling Commandos, to discuss the matter themselves(all agreed Captain Rogers would have found the matter “silly,” though they couldn’t quite settle who ought to keep the bike). Howard Stark’s last interviewtouched on the matter (he thought the Pagets ought to “fork it over”), and Warner Bros. purchased the rights Laurette Paget’s autobiographybefore she had even started writing it. Matthew Ellis, as a Harvard Law student in 1987, wrote a final about the case’s “legal and moral particularities.” 

            Then, in 1992, the family quietly capitulated, and the motorcycle was passed briefly into the hands of the United States Army before being given to the Smithsonian. The Paget family disappeared from the headlines as suddenly as they’d appeared; in 2001, Jean Paget died, leaving Petit Place to his son-in-law, who converted it into a tourist shop, where one can purchase key-chains and refrigerator magnet shaped like Captain America’s dilapidated bike.

            That rusted motorcycle, visibly brimming with history—one of its is mirrors missing; its kickstand has been hastily repaired with a hammer and nail; there is a bullet hole in the fender—is in many ways the center of Ruxandra Geedan’s brisk, charming new book, “Life Lease: The Story of the Battle for Steve Rogers’s Estate.” The motorcycle, like most of Captain Rogers’s belongings—what Geedan, in her introduction, calls “the detritus of a life,” material remains she claims are made all the more precious and urgently important in the absence of a physical body to mourn. “The physical evidence that Captain America was a human man was lost in the sea,” Geedan writes, “leaving that burden of proof on what he left behind.”

            Geedan organizes her book around the functions each of these “remains” left behind—starting with big ticket items, like motorcycles, USO costumes, and his original shield, and moving into the more intimate places as she goes along, cataloging, among others, the Smithsonian’s acquisition of Rogers’s wartime artwork, the Pentagon’s seizure of his personal letters, and the New York City Tenement Museum purchasing the building in Flatbush in which Rogers was raised, turning his “likely” childhood apartment into a branch of the museum. Much of this is very interesting stuff, to be sure, and Geedan makes a fascinating case that many of these belongings, the motorcycle chief among them, stood in for Rogers’s body when his disappearance “left a nation without a physical site to mourn.”

            Leaving aside the memorials erected to Rogers—principally in Prospect Park and, in 2004, as part of the World War II memorial on the National Mall—Geedan is right, and she makes the strong case that Rogers’s fractured legacy can be traced through the worldly materials he owned or passed along. She tells the story of a letter written by James “Bucky” Barnes in 1938, indicating his and Rogers’s membership in their local chapter of the American Federation of Labor, which, “due to its communist leanings,” was denounced as a forgery by the Smithsonian institution in 1962, though they nonetheless attempted to purchase it from Barnes’s sister, Rebecca, no fewer than four times. Another letter from Rogers to a friend in Brooklyn, which details the thought process behind his enlistment, was printed verbatimas recruitment material for the US Army and the Marines, both in 2003. A figure study Rogers did in the 30s, depicting “a nude male from behind,” was purchased at auction by an anonymous bidder in 1972, and has evidently hung on the wall of a bar on Castro Street in San Francisco ever since.

Geedan details each of these items, their physical qualities, histories, and present homes, often with little to no commentary on who acquired them or why. This unsentimental choice, while welcome with regards to more jingoistic conversations (“America’s history belongs to America” was a rallying cry during the motorcycle debacle), tends to erase some more complicated questions that arise when reading this book in 2017. Does, for instance, the Pentagon really have a “clearly outlined legal right,” as they have claimed, to anything bearing Steve Rogers’s signature? The statement was revised to include only those items “produced or signed before the year 2000” in 2013, but, Geedan notes, it has returned to its original wording.

It is difficult to read any book about Steve Rogers without comparing it to previous biographys, such as Walter Lord’s seminal “The Man With the Shield” and Elizabeth Maxwell’s magnificent, meticulously researched “An American Life,” but Walter’s book was released in 1961, and Maxwell’s tome was published in 1998. Geedan, whose background is in film criticism, knows she is writing for a different audience, one for whom mid-century Captain America is a fuzzy, inherited memory, but the Avengers is a formative one. The generation that knew Steve Rogers as a comic book character, a symbol for immigrants, or an emblem of American imperialism has faded away; those who know him best now know him as a meme.

Geedan’s book was completed before Rogers disappeared last year, though her forward touches on the matter. She writes that Steve Rogers—or Captain America—need not be an active, living person for his image and symbol to be appropriated, or for his “secondary remains” to be redistributed, displayed, propped up, or hidden away. What, one might reasonably ask, of cellphone footage of the airport Rogers left in smolders? What of his work with the CDC, the Department of Education, the DOD, SHIELD? His violation—whateveronemaythinkofthelawsthemselves—of international law?

The problem with real superheroes, we might as well concede, is that when they stop being superheroes they remain real people, whose choices and errors are amplified beyond what can be condensed into a mission statement, or a persona, or even a USO show. Geedan is smart enough to know this, and confines herself to the facts and, perhaps even more comfortingly, the objects, which can mean anything but cannot ever spring to life to correct the record themselves. The book is therefore grounded principally in the exploration of Rogers as a symbol; his personhood, much like his body once was, is lost in the sea.

_This article appears in the print edition of the August 1 st, 2017 issue, with the headline “Unidentified Remains.” _

           

           

 

            “Not gonna lie,” Sam said, sliding the phone back across the table to Steve, “I’d read it.”

            “It’s so overblown,” Steve replied, wrinkling his nose. “I mean, isn’t it—it’s not that it’s _my_ motorcycle, or whatever, it’s that it’s from the war. Right?”

            “I think it’s probably both,” Sam conceded, then raised his eyebrows. “A nude male from behind, eh?”

            “Hush,” Steve blushed. “I don’t even know what drawing that _is_.”

            “Drew too many butts back then to keep track?”

            Steve snorted. He was glad Sam was taking the book review so lightly; it had churned Steve’s stomach a little bit, with its frank discussion of his _stuff_ , his naked drawings and his letters to Peggy and his communist leanings. God love little Rebecca, though. He’d always liked that kid.

            The Smithsonian had been wrong, though; he and Bucky _had_ been union guys, and they’d both attended a fair few communist and socialist meetings in Manhattan and even close to home. Whenever one of them started to chicken out, the other would come home cussing a blue streak about the bullshit at work, and they’d be back on it.

“You okay, man?” Sam said lightly, drawing Steve from his thoughts. He looked up. Sam was running his fingers lightly over the tabletop, squinting down at the phone where they’d read the article about the new book.

He’d already known about the motorcycle debate, and the use of his image to recruit for the army—and remembered with pleasure the YouTube clip he’d seen, of Jim Morita on television sometime in 2003, saying Steve would find the whole thing to be “an embarrassment on every level.” He hadn’t been wrong.

Morita had died in 2009, though. The same year a coffee table book came out that had the contents of all twelve of his wartime sketch books. Monkeys on stilts, nightmares full of needles, _Willie and Joe_ knock-offs, hazy French landscapes, naked bodies, bloody bodies, Mom by the window, the parts of a rifle, the underside of planes, birds pecking through rubble, Bucky flipping him the bird, Gabe and Dernier studying maps, Morita with the radio, Dugan and James trying to remember the words to old songs, deer and rabbits Bucky shot and Dernier skinned, hands holding triggers and hands holding cigarettes, Peggy in a wedding dress, smudged faces of starved civilians, boys still covered in pimples and who didn’t need to shave stuffed into uniform, the clotheslines and skylines of home. His diary, in effect—as a big, glossy coffee table book. He’d seen it, actually, at Tony’s house, once.

“Steve?” Sam prompted him.

“I hate that my mom’s place is a museum now,” Steve mumbled, and Sam hummed a bit.

“Gotta feel invasive,” he said, and Steve nodded.

“They didn’t know any of us were still alive when they did it,” he said, trying to sound fair, and Sam shrugged, as if to say, _Doesn’t mean it feels good_. Sam said stuff like that a lot—being fair to people was important, and Sam was one of the best when it came to that, really, that Steve had ever met. Didn’t mean it felt good.

“Home is home, though,” said Sam, with a tiny smile.

Steve smiled too.

The truth was, they didn’t _have_ a home, these days—they had places, they had temporary places, motel rooms and frozen mountain skier’s cabins, a few clunky vans, empty houses, abandoned or unrented apartments and very occasionally, homes of Natasha’s “associates” and friends. Whenever they had to break in somewhere that someone still owned, they tried to leave a little money, a minimal mess. Sam teased Steve for acting like a good guest in a house they broke into, but he couldn’t help it. Mama may very well have raised a fool, Steve thought, but she didn’t raise a rude house guest. Even when calling themselves “guests” was stretching the term to its absolute outer limits.

They were trying to still be helping people.

Which had been somehow both harder and easier than Steve had anticipated. It was harder because when he was an Avenger, or Captain America, these things fell into his lap; it was easier because—well, they still sort of _did_. What was it he’d said to Tony? _When I see a situation pointed south, I can’t ignore it_. It wasn’t that hard to find situations pointing south.

“Speaking of which,” Sam said, thoughtfully, “it’s getting on time to find a new place. Though I will miss it here.”

_Here_ was the surprisingly cozy room in a sleazy, pay-by-the-hour motel they’d found a week ago. The bed groaned ominously every time somebody sat or lay on it, but it was soft and the comforter was quilted—Steve, who was always chilly, appreciated such things. The room’s one light source, a squat lamp next to the bed, emitted a strikingly yellow light, which gave everything an air of homey brightness, even if it also gave Sam a headache.

Steve looked at Sam, then. They hadn’t been here long, and unlike most places, they hadn’t been brought here by a “mission”—no rogue Hydra cell (or, as they were discovering just as often, neo-Nazi whackjobs), no alien, Stark, and Pym tech being traded in back alleys, no dirty cops or politicians—nobody here, in short, that required their attention. They’d just needed a place to lay low.

“You catch wind of something?” Steve asked, and Sam shrugged lightly and pursed his lips, toying lightly with the tablet they’d been reading the article about Steve’s motorcycle on, tapping in the password again and again. Steve watched his hands.

“I gotta pay somebody a visit,” he said after a moment.

Steve raised his eyebrows.

He and Sam had, since that night after the Raft, operated exactly the same as they always had, except that now when they shared a bed they didn’t wait until someone had a nightmare to be close, and now sometimes in private they kissed one another’s cheeks or jaws, and if one of them got hurt or scared the other didn’t let go of him once the danger had passed. They kissed, for real, usually in the mornings or late at night, usually gently and slowly and sometimes the exact opposite way. They fucked a few times, too, and found Steve, who’d cut his teeth in alleys and bathroom stalls, already knew how to have sex like a man on the run, and Sam, who’d been born into a world where men like them had slipped from being invisible into being despised, knew how to stay calm, and they were both pretty crappy at making love and the calculus of shared pleasure, and both reasonably good at making the other come. It was a work in progress.

But sometimes Sam was just so—unknowable, to Steve. He knew Sam’s movements, his inflections, his facial expressions, his smiles, until he _didn’t_. Until Sam got a look on his face that Steve just couldn’t fathom. Like right now.

“Who?” Steve asked, when Sam failed to elaborate on his visit.

Sam looked resigned, like he knew Steve was going to ask—how could he not?—but still resented it.

“It’s Riley’s birthday,” Sam mumbled, at last. “And—I gotta go see his mom.”

 

This was how they found themselves in the third in what Sam was calling the Crappy Van Collection, driving slower than Steve liked (“We can’t get pulled over,” Sam snapped constantly, “you’re an internationally wanted war criminal, and I’m also that _and_ black to boot”), southwest from the thick North Dakota woods they’d been lodging in and towards Riley’s childhood home, which was, apparently, in Indiana.

“I don’t think I’ve ever even been to Indiana,” Steve said, putting on his best city-boy voice, just to get a rise out of Sam, who was quiet and skittish. “What do they have there? Maybe corn?”

It was true that Steve had never been to Indiana, but he had been the beneficiary of Bucky’s rich uncle in Indiana’s semi-regular care packages of sweets, comic books, small toys, and—best of all—colored pencils. Bucky and his sisters always shared the colored pencils with Steve and, once, when the packages arrived unusually close together, the Barnes children had ceded the package, still unopened, to Steve immediately. Steve had never been so grateful in his life.

Sam smiled. “Yeah, I used to give him shit for it all the time, actually. He’d get all—” Sam paused, frowned, and then flattened his voice into a midwestern drawl that, Steve realized with a thrill of something almost like recognition, was an imitation of Riley’s voice—“‘It’s a beautiful place to grow up and the fifth biggest producer of corn in the US’—like, is he proud of that? Is it, we don’t make the most corn, or we _do_ make a ton of corn? I don’t know.” Sam was laughing, though, and Steve found he liked having the car full of Riley’s voice, even in an impression. It was like an old friend he’d forgotten about.

Sam’s smile wilted a bit. “It’s pretty nice, though. He grew up near the beach, well, near Lake Michigan. So not in the middle of a cornfield.”

“Good,” said Steve, trying to keep the tone a light, because nothing made Sam crash quite like Riley. “I’m glad you’re not taking me to the middle of a cornfield.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Sam said, reaching over to nudge Steve a little.

They lapsed into silence, and Steve watched the world roll by with a strange, detached longing. Out here—anywhere, really, a few hundred miles from big cities or giant chain restaurants—things were much more recognizable, much more the way he remembered them, even if he’d never been on any of the roads that made up the fifteen hour drive between the Dakotas and the town Riley’s mother lived in now, which was called Shelbyville.

Steve wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring out the window where Sam said, “I ever tell you how Riley and me met?”

Steve looked up, surprised. Sam was loathe to offer information on Riley—so much so, in fact, that Steve had for a long time been surprised, in retrospect, that Sam mentioned Riley the second time they ever talked. Had he not shown up on top of Sam’s car, it would have probably taken Steve much longer to organically mention Bucky.

“I don’t think you have,” he told Sam.

Sam smiles, really big, and says, “He punched me in the face.”

This was not what Steve was expecting.

“We were still in basic,” Sam continues, tapping his finger on the wheel like it’s to the beat of a song, but there’s none playing, “and he’d overslept, the dork. I literally didn’t even know his name, but I’m like, I don’t wanna see a dude get reamed for oversleeping, and our DI was really into the whole playing crazy thing—I don’t know if they did this in the forties, but I know a lotta guys who, when they were in basic, their drill instructors tend to have a kinda, y’know, _special_ humor, theoretically so that they can weed out anyone who can’t deal with crazy, I guess, or keep you on your fucking toes, ‘DI is crazy, who knows what he’ll do if we fuck up?’ Personally, I think the job just attracts weirdos.”

Steve, who would place his own drill instructors in exactly the same category (one had repeatedly threatened to light his ass on fire to make him run faster, and had gone so far as to jog behind him, flicking his lighter at the seat of Steve’s baggy pants), snorted and nodded.

“So,” Sam continued, “Riley’s dumb and overslept, and I went to wake him up, and he sits bolt upright and punches me in the face.”

Steve gave an appreciative whoop of laughter.

“You should have seen him, I’ve never seen somebody apologize so much—I always told him I owed him one.”

“One?”

“A punch,” Sam cackled.

Steve snorted. Sam’s Riley stories didn’t often align too well with any of the ones Steve had about Bucky, but there was always a kinship. Bucky once said that every time he got hit on Steve’s behalf, he got to crack Steve in the face.

“How’d your drill instructor take it?” Steve asked, and Sam shook his head grimly.

“He goes, we get out there and he goes, ‘Why in pluperfect hell is this man’s nose bleeding?’ and without missing a fuckin’ beat, Riley says, ‘Sir, he gets them at night,’ and this guy—I can’t even remember his name, I can see his face, though—he says, ‘That right?’ and Riley says, ‘It’s because of the altitude, sir.’”

Steve found himself actually laughing aloud at that.

“Weren’t you as basic in Wisconsin?” he asked.

“We surely were,” Sam replied, shaking his head like he can’t believe the sheer dumb-assitude (a word, presumably of his own invention, he’d used to describe Steve more than once) of it all.

 

The rest of the drive passed in amiable silence, and when they arrived in Shelbyville, Steve didn’t need Sam to ask to please go see Riley’s mother alone. He checked them into a motel a ways down the road—grateful, as ever, that his slow-growing beard was finally at a length that meaningfully disguised his face, especially at first glance.

He’d been doing some googling, wondering idly if he could non-suspiciously order the book about his stuff, for less than twenty minutes when someone knocked at the door, and when he ignored the knock, his phone buzzed in his hand.

_SMS – 2:39 PM_

_Natasha_

_let me in_

            In a second he was off the bed and at the door, which he opened to reveal, indeed, Natasha, wearing khaki shorts and a lumpy hoodie, her hair, now past her chin, in a loose, shapeless bob. She really did know how to look like nobody at all.

            “Nice beard,” she said.

            “Come inside,” he replied, a little tersely—he never liked her insistence on playing it quite so dangerously cool—and she stepped over the threshold.

            “Nice digs,” she said, pulling something out of her canvas bag—a book, glossy and hardcovered, with a faded, black and white photo of his own face, pinched in a silly, unposed grin, on the cover.

            _Life Lease: The Story of the Battle for Steve Rogers’s Estate_ , the cover read, and Steve recognized the photo with a surge of strange pain—it was from a photobooth, and if the cover designer had been less precise with his cropping, it would be clear Steve wasn’t the photo’s main subject. The three Barnes sisters, plus Bucky, were inside as well, the younger girls crushed together in the front, Rebecca balancing her chin on top of one of their heads—was it Ruthie’s or Lil’s?—and Steve and Bucky crushed into the back, barely discernible in all but the last shot, when the girls had begun to filter out. They’d been shoulder to shoulder—or, more accurately, Steve’s shoulder to Bucky’s mid-bicep—and playing it cool themselves, pretending they weren’t delighted at the novelty of having their photo taken. Rebecca, Bucky’s oldest sister and the most prone to keep things in order, had saved the photostrip for at least another ten years, as it had still been in the Barnes home when Bucky and subsequently Steve had shipped off for the army. Clearly, Steve supposed, staring at the cover, she—or somebody else—had kept it for a good deal longer.

            “Thanks,” he said, then remembered that Natasha bursting in wasn’t supposed to happen anymore. “Are you okay?”

            “Always,” she said, lightly, sitting cross-legged on the motel bed. There was just one. Steve wasn’t so stupid as to believe she hadn’t noticed, but he really, really hoped she wasn’t going to say anything about it.

Steve sank down onto the bed next to her. She’d pulled bottle a of seltzer water from her canvas bag—which was embroidered with initials that definitely weren’t hers, because she thought of everything—and she passed it to him wordlessly before retrieving another one for herself.

“It’s a local brand,” she said, lightly. “Hope you like cherry.”

Steve nodded his gratitude. He knew what she was doing, why she was playing like there was nothing strange about this, like they hadn’t been absent from one another’s lives for over a year. Like their last conversation hadn’t been terse and cold, and entirely about moving as many people out of harm’s way as possible. Like they hadn’t severed their connection, or at the very least, tied the tourniquet so tightly they’d forgotten the feeling. He understood why she did it, why she pretended it hadn’t been a week since they’d last talked, got ice cream, got beers, played cards. But he really hated how it felt.

He didn’t have her skill at pretending, or lying; she’d told him years ago he was a rotten liar and she’d been exactly right. He couldn’t fold himself back into intimacy with ease. He’d never known how.

He held the sweating seltzer bottle and hoped she wasn’t here to tell him something horrible had happened.

“Where’s Sam?” she asked.

“He’s visiting a friend,” Steve replied, a little tightly, because she almost surely already knew that. Coming here—to a town they had a connection to, a personal one—was a foolhardy move, one Steve only agreed to because it meant so much to Sam, and because after that plane full of Tony’s toys and alien weapons crashed in New York last week, the heat was fully off them for the moment. Steve had to admit a grudging admiration—tempered with a smudge of concern—for the spider-kid.

But Natasha surely found them the instant they crossed into Indiana. They were visiting Sam’s _dead best friend’s mother_ —they couldn’t get much more obvious than this.

“I hope it’s good for both of them,” Nat replied.

“Not to be rude,” said Steve, never in his life having begun that sentence without continuing on to be very rude, “but what are you doing here?”

Natasha smiled and huffed her breath a little bit, like he was being a jerk and she couldn’t believe it, but she didn’t bother to keep it up long.

“After Tony’s plane crashed I wanted to check in on you guys,” she said, lightly, and Steve wondered what she was concealing under this explanation—was it concern, for her friends, or worry, that some piece of information hurled through the news in the wake of the crash might expose them, might make its way back to her, or to someone she was working with or for, or to Natasha herself at the center of the web. Steve took a sip of his seltzer—it was actually pretty good, though Steve had always been a sucker for anything carbonated—and told himself not to be sentimental.

“Well,” Steve said, “we’re fine. How’s the kid? Spider-Man?”

Nat made a noise like Steve was being funny. “I haven’t seen him since you have,” she said, then, with a sly look, added, “Presumably.” She smiled a little. “But last I heard, he’s fine. Tony’s taken a real shine on the kid.”

_Taken a real shine on_ —did she do that on purpose, talk down-home when they were in the heartland? Or was she just that good at blending in?

It bothered Steve that he genuinely didn’t know.

“I’ve gathered. How is—he? Tony, I mean?”

Steve felt stupid for the way he asked, like Tony was someone’s scorned ex, or dying relative, or friend buried in scandal, someone to talk about delicately, shyly, with the understanding that probing into the subject too much would hurt everyone involved. In the end, his split with Tony had broken down into such tiny, personal pieces—a best friend, a mother—that Steve never felt he had much room to defend himself. Yes, he believed he’d been right to resist Ross’s urging, and yes, he believed he was right to defend Bucky. Leaving Tony in the snow, though—storming off, making it so personal—that felt. Different.

And the long-unanswered letter and ignored phone didn’t make him feel much better. But he’d been doing—he’d really, really believed he’d been doing—what was right.

Natasha smiled again. Steve remembered the way her expression had frozen over when he’d promised her that Tony would forgive her. He thought sometimes those two were like a brother and a sister separated at birth, shipped off to different, cold families, warped in different, complementary ways until they’d grown up and found one another again, strangers with the same expressions on their faces. They didn’t need to talk much to understand each other.

“He’s alright,” she said, “and he likes that you’re off doing wetwork.”

“We’re not doing wetwork,” Steve said, aware that he was only telling half the truth. It wasn’t like there was a dry version.

“Well, you can say that,” Nat replied, “but I’m just passing it along.”

“He’s back with Pepper,” Steve commented, to steer her off this distinction. “I saw the news. How’d that go with her helping Scott and Clint?”

Nat raised her eyebrows. “She disconnected from that pretty early—just kept their kids and such safe until the worst of it blew over, and put them in contact with some good lawyers. Paid for it, too, but it was never public.”

Steve nodded, a little guilty he hadn’t kept better track.

“They’re on house arrest now,” she added, “Clint pretty much forever, at least in theory, and Scott for another year, I think.”

“Could be worse,” Steve said.

“Much,” Nat agreed, “especially for Clint, he breaks out pretty much daily.”

Steve smiled—that sounded about right. “And Wanda?”

Nat made a little bit of a face, and Steve felt a plunging cold in his throat and belly—was she okay?

“She’s got some hideaways. Vision is—well, he’s kind of playing by his own rules, don’t get Tony started on it, but she and him. They’re, y’know—”  
            “They’re _what_?”

“Did you really not know?”

“He—he isn’t—she’s a kid!”

“Kids do lots of stuff. Anyways, she’s twenty-two.”

Steve was a bit taken aback by that—he thought of Wanda as something closer to the underfed teenager she’d been when they met. He wondered if Natasha knew she was exactly the age he was when he died over the frozen Atlantic.

“But he—he isn’t really a—a _person_ , is he? I mean—shit—I mean, you know, he’s—”

“Don’t be close-minded, Steve,” Nat tutted, but then she nodded, cracked a smile that showed just the tips of her teeth. “It’s weird as hell, but she’s been through some shit. Anyways, she’s got a pretty good hidey-hole at the moment. She’s checking in with me. I’m training her up a bit.”

Steve, still recovering from the news about Vision and Wanda, raised his eyebrows at that.

“Training her up?”

Nat shrugged. “She should be able to fight without magic if she needs to.”

Steve couldn’t disagree with that.

“Plus,” Nat added, suddenly sounding something close to rueful, “she needs somebody. A little—you know. Support.”

Steve looked at her, then, in her boxy sweater and shapeless pants, and wondered if she was saying something else, saying something about him. _Tony begged you_ , he could hear her saying, underneath the words, _not to split us all apart_.

He swallowed.

Natasha stood.

“I should go,” she said, shaking her hair back into her face and shrugging her bag over her shoulder. “My love to Sam. Enjoy the book—it’s pretty good.”

Steve nodded, and walked her to the door. He wondered if she was going to embrace him—like she had at Nick’s pretend grave, like she had at Peggy’s funeral—but as no one had died, it seemed, she left without a word.

Alone in the motel room again, Steve blinked in the light and tried to shake the feeling he’d forgotten something crucial he was supposed to say.

            When Sam got back, hours later, Steve was on the bed, hunched over, making slow progress—he’d never been a fast reader—through the book Natasha left. The one about him. He’d had to pause a number of times, the strangeness of seeing his maternal grandfather as a footnote, his father’s name, profession, and military service catalogued as if it had happened to somebody else, and the date of death listed dryly and without commentary—not even to note that it was Steve, aged ten and hacking with a cough himself, who’d _found_ him that way—making him dizzy, sick, overwhelmed, the Smithsonian exhibit elevated beyond what he could handle.

_Joseph Rogers, August 1897 – September 20 th, 1932. Sarah Rogers (née O’Sullivan), December 1st, 1898 – January 17th, 1939_. They didn’t know Dad’s birthday. Steve realized that meant he didn’t, either. How had he never asked?

            He soldiered on reading, though. He felt strangely like Natasha had demanded he do so.

            His mother’s only picture of her parents, a silvery gelatin print she’d brought with her to America with almost nothing else, had apparently shown up on something called _Antiques Roadshow_ in 1985.

            He’d jumped when the key turned in the lock, glancing down wildly at his phone to find Sam had texted twenty minutes ago. He’d missed it.

            “Hey,” Sam said, flipping the switch and startling Steve so badly he dropped the book.

            “Hi,” he said, standing up and crossing the room to Sam quickly, going to hug him without thinking twice about it, without another word, and Sam, he thought, was grateful for it. His tense shoulders relaxed marginally in Steve’s hold, and he let out kind of a shaky breath before reaching his arms up to hug Steve back.

            “Hey, man,” Sam said softly, when they broke apart, and again without thinking much of it Steve put a kiss on his cheek.

            “How was it?” he asked, sure from Sam’s face, from the heaviness of his shoulders, that no matter how well it went, Sam would wear grief like a heavy coat for days to come.

            “It was okay,” Sam whispered, and put his forehead back on Steve’s shoulder.

            Steve brought his hand up to cup the back of Sam’s head.

            “She was glad to hear I’m keeping up with you,” Sam said, more lightly, raising his head of Steve and smiling. “I didn’t admit to knowing where you were—she probably saw through me, but—but she said she was glad we were in touch.”

            He leaned across and kissed Steve once, then cupped his face and kissed him for a long time after.

           

            That night, Steve fell asleep thinking about Sam, younger and lighter, ragging Riley relentlessly for punching him, of the way that moment must have been recreated and retold, of this different Sam, unblemished by guilt and loss, that Steve would never meet.

            There was a Steve Sam would never meet too, he supposed.

            He dreamed he was back up in the projector box, loading the reels, smelling their particular smell, stomach growling and eyelids heavy, when a low whine behind him made him turn and the theater melted away.

            A boy, looking all of sixteen, was groaning behind him, clutching his belly, which was open, irretrievable. The Steve Rogers who lugged film reels around a movie theater didn’t know how to tell if a wound was survivable or not, but the Steve Rogers in France did.

            He knew this boy, or knew his face. He wanted to be a _maquisard_ , but he was so young, so coltish and overeager, he was often dismissed. When Dernier had connected the Commandos with the maquis out in some thick, barely-tamed woody mountains in northern France, the kid had taken a shine on Steve and the rest, tried so hard to volunteer himself.

            And they’d been trying to find a Hydra base, then—not cutting railroad tracks or intercepting communication—and they’d brought some FFI friends of Dernier’s. There’d been a fire fight.

            Steve didn’t remember it in any order, really. Just the kid’s mouth gulping open and closed, like a fish out of water, and the odd sick coppery smell of the blood, and the stark _color_ , the strange grey-purple, of the kid’s intestines.

            “Shit,” he breathed, and collapsed at the kid’s side, his hands fluttering uselessly everywhere, because what should he _do_? Where did you _start_ , when you could see the blood rushing out, insistently almost, in time with the rapid heartbeat, his heart still beating but God how could he—

            The kid whined again.

            “Ils se—sont enfuis,” he whispered, his voice a strange gurgle.

            “Forget that,” Steve gasped, picking up the kid’s head, trying to stop him from making that awful noise, hearing Bucky and Gabe hit their knees at the kids’ side, not looking up from his horribly white face, his freckles pronounced and his eyes enormous and empty and brown. “Ob—oublie—ça. Don’t talk. Ne, ne, ne parle pas, okay? Just wait.”

            The kid’s hand scrambled at his belly and Steve saw Bucky catch it.

            “Tout va bien,” Bucky said, accentless, very quietly, while Gabe barked over his shoulder for Dernier and Morita to come quick.

            The kid’s breath was reedy and fast, the smell of blood overpowering, and he tried to sit up, but couldn’t hold himself up.

            “Ne bouge pas! Je t’aide, d’accord, ne bouge pas,” Gabe said, urgently, but it didn’t matter; the kid was sliding back down whether he meant to or not. The hand Bucky wasn’t holding caught on the star on Steve’s chest.

            “Captaine?” he whispered.

            “I got you,” Steve said, still cradling the kid’s head.

            He was going to die. Steve knew it so thoroughly, so completely, he didn’t know if he’d cottoned on in the moment. It didn’t matter. Knowing wouldn’t change it.

            _Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit_ , he thought, wildly, just the same as he had the last second before his plane hit the ice and everything in and around him shattered into pain beyond reason or words, _as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end._

            It wasn’t exactly the right prayer for the imminently dead. But it was one his mom said a lot.

            “Oh, Christ. Oh—easy, easy,” Bucky grunted, nearby, and Steve realized blood and maybe watery vomit were coming from the kid’s mouth, running onto Steve’s hands and wrists.

            “Ne bouge pas,” Gabe said, and Steve heard a voice above him, but couldn’t make it out. The kid’s cheeks were so cold in his hands.

            “I got you,” Steve said.

             “Je ne vois rien,” the boy whimpered, and then more blood and mess came from his mouth, and then Steve heard the zip and click of a camera shutter.

            He turned around. Natasha stood over him, in her hoodie, holding a massive camera, the kind they used to take photos for newspapers with. _Ziiip_. The flashbulb went off.

            “Help me,” Steve told her.

            “Smile,” she told him.

            He turned around, disgusted, furious, frustrated beyond imagining, and saw Bucky no longer holding the boy’s hand, his face gaunt and masked and blank, overlong hair in dirty clumps around his eyes.

            _No, this is a dream_ , Steve thought, furiously, and heard Natasha’s camera again.

            “ _Smile_ ,” she growled behind them, insistent. Bucky blinked back into himself.

            “Selfish,” choked the little French boy, whose vomit was running down Steve’s forearms and whose blood was already impossible to tell from the mud he was lying in, and then Steve heard someone saying, “C’mon, baby, easy, wake up.”

            Sam.

            Steve woke up all at once, with a shout that was almost “fuck!” but too formless, and Sam was rubbing his back and saying, “Hey, baby, Steve, hey, it’s Sam, it’s okay,” and Steve put his face in his hands.

            _Smile_.

            _Selfish_.

            _He loves that you’re doing wetwork._

_She needs a little, you know, support._

_I’m trying to keep you from tearing the Avengers apart._

_Captaine?_

_Smile._

_He loves that you’re doing wetwork._

_The book is therefore grounded principally in the exploration of Rogers as a symbol; his personhood, much like his body once was, is lost in the sea._

_I’m sorry, Steve, that is dangerously arrogant._

_Smile!_

_So was I._

_She needs somebody. She needs a little support._

_Selfish._

_Smile!_

            “Steve.”

            Somebody was tugging his hand, folding something into it. Steve’s eyes were gritty but the light was on; Sam was giving him a stick of gum. Gum was grounding.

            He looked at Sam’s face. Sam smiled a little.

            “Hey.”

            “Hi.”

            Sam kneeling by the bed in front of Steve, and he was holding Steve’s hand in both of his own. With a look of thoughtful concentration, he opened Steve’s palm, and unwrapped the gum he’d handed him. He crumpled the wrapper up and threw it away without a second glace.

            “Have it,” he said, and Steve did. When he set his hand back in his lap, Sam picked it up again, and kissed his fingers.

            “I’m sorry,” Steve mumbled, realizing belatedly that he must have woken Sam up.

            “It’s alright, you know it is,” Sam said. He hoisted himself onto the bed beside Steve and didn’t let go of his hand. They sat shoulder to shoulder, their backs against the cheap headboard.

            Steve chewed his gum for a moment. Sam tilted his head until it was resting on Steve’s shoulder, and it was funny, because even after all this time—five _years_ , now, since they hauled him out of the ice—Steve still expected to be smaller than everyone. But he didn’t mind being about to contain Sam with his body, curl around him, make him feel safe.

            “Are you really okay?” he asked, abruptly, and Sam lifted his head up, leaving a cooler spot on Steve’s shoulder where his cheek was. “After Riley’s mom, I mean.”

            Sam shrugged. “Of course not. But also, you know, I am.”

            Steve did know.

            “Natasha came by today,” he said, and wondered why he hadn’t told Sam earlier—if he’d wanted to avoid worrying Sam, or overloading him, or if he’d wanted to keep the encounter a little secret, a mystery to puzzle out on his own time before he shared it with anyone.

            In any case, that didn’t work. Not between them, and not with a mission like theirs.

            “She did?” Sam sounded surprised, but not too alarmed—perhaps he’d figured Steve would have told him, if there really was an emergency. “Is that where you got the book? I thought you’d snuck out.”

            “Nah.” Steve folded his hand around Sam’s again, their fingers looking like an old oil painting in the cheap, yellowy motel light. “She brought it. I’m not sure why she came. She said Stark’s plane getting hijacked spooked her.”

            “Maybe it did.”

            “Does Natasha get spooked?”

            Sam laughed a little. “If she did, she’d probably admit it. She knows nobody would believe her.”

            Steve smiled too, at that. “Apparently Tony likes that we’re doing ‘wetwork.’” He wrinkled his nose.

            Sam, to his surprise, laughed louder then, and shook his head. “Man, Tony loves you.”

            “ _What_?”

            “I mean it, babe, that guy is so wild about you. It’s an understandable position.”

            “He hates my guts,” Steve replied, wondering if Sam was trying to prank him. Tony, whatever he thought of Steve—and, Steve assumed, he didn’t think much—certainly didn’t like him much. He found him embarrassing, old and in the way, weird, upstaging, unpleasant. A cheap knock-off of his father. A cheap knock-off of the guy Tony had grown up admiring.

            “You never think anybody likes you,” Sam tutted. “Tony thinks you’re a hoot.”

            “A _hoot_?”

            “Yes. We’re in Indiana. People say these things.”

            “We’re not _from_ Indiana,” Steve snorted.

            “My point stands,” said Sam, and he must have known Steve felt a cringe coming, a need to deny—Tony couldn’t possibly like him, really, not even if the pair of them did come to understand one another quite well for a few years. They’d—they’d clicked, except when they didn’t; they’d had quarrels that Steve suspected were just intellectual jaunts for Tony, little mind games, and others that hurt the way a real fight did, all sore knuckles and heavy, aching limbs. When they agreed, when they laughed together or made single, fluid motions in the field, it felt so natural every disagreement afterwards felt jarring.

            “Well,” Steve said. “Maybe.”

            “I was right, wasn’t I,” Sam said, “Spider-kid was involved in the highjacking?”

            Steve snorted. “Yeah. Nat says Tony’s ‘taken a shine.’ Oh, and Wanda and Vision. They’re—I guess they’re, they’re like, _together_.”

            Sam nodded. “That tracks, I think.”

            “He’s a _robot_.”

            “Yeah, well. Stranger things have happened.” Sam leaned over and kissed Steve’s nose, and then his mouth. “For instance, I just kissed Captain America.”

            “You did,” Steve agreed, sagely, a happy something swelling in his belly. He kissed Sam again, thought of himself at thirteen or fifteen or twenty, imagined trying to envision this moment then, trying to dream it up. It would have been impossible. It would have seemed like a dream, strange and unanchored.

            “I love you,” Sam whispered.

            Steve, who had never said those words to anyone before, heard himself gulp. “Really?”

            “Yes, really,” Sam said, and kissed Steve’s nose again. “You and your giant nose.”

            “I. I love you too,” Steve said, and let Sam hold his face and kiss him for a long time. Dream or not, he felt whole and right in ways he never thought he really had before.

            After a long time, Sam pulled away and lowered them down onto the pillows again. Steve could hear birdsong outside; the dawn was coming fast.

            “How do we know we’re doing the right thing?” Steve whispered.

            “We don’t,” Sam said, after a minute, finding Steve’s hand and folding it between both of his again. “But we’re trying. It’s all we can do.”

 


End file.
